Winter School on Secure Computation and Efficiency

Post school updates:

Slides and Videos:

• Background and Definitions – Yehuda Lindell  (video)
• The Yao construction and Its Proof of Security – Yehuda Lindell (video)
  
• The GMW Construction: the Multiparty Case and Security for Malicious – Benny Pinkas (video)
• The BGW Construction for the Information Theoretic Setting – Benny Pinkas (video)
• Sigma Protocols – Yehuda Lindell (video)
• Oblivious Transfer – Benny Pinkas (video)
• Two-Party Secure Computation for Malicious Adversaries – Yehuda Lindell (video)
• Constructions for Specific Function of Interest – Benny Pinkas (video)
• Fully Homomorphic Encryption (two lectures) – Shai Halevi (video 1) (video 2)
• Efficient Secure Computation with an Honest Majority – Yuval Ishai (video)
• The IPS Compiler and Related Constructions – Yuval Ishai (video)

Support: The school was made possible with the help of the European Research Council, Bar Ilan University, the faculty of exact sciences, the department of computer science, and IBM.

Background: In the setting of secure computation, two or more parties with private inputs wish to compute some joint function of their inputs. The security requirements of such a computation are privacy (meaning that the parties learn the output and nothing more), correctness (meaning that the output is correctly distributed), independence of inputs, and more. This setting encompasses computations as simple as coin-tossing and agreement, and as complex as electronic voting, electronic auctions, electronic cash schemes, anonymous transactions, and private information retrieval schemes. Due to its generality, secure computation is a central tool in cryptography.

The target audience for the school is graduate students and postdocs in cryptography (we will assume background in cryptography, but not secure computation). However, faculty, undergrads and professionals with the necessary background are welcome. The winter school is open to participants from all over the world; all talks will be in English.

School overview: In this winter school, we will study secure two-party and multiparty computation in the presence of semi-honest and malicious adversaries, in both the computational and information-theoretic settings. The first day of the school will focus mainly on the theoretical foundations of secure computation, covering definitions and the main feasibility results (Yao, GMW and BGW). The focus of the second day is on tools and techniques for achieving efficient secure computation. Finally, in the third day, we will study some important recent results, including homomorphic encryption and its application to secure computation.

Organizers: Yehuda Lindell and Benny Pinkas, Department of Computer Science, Bar Ilan University, Israel

Where: Feldman International Conference Center (Building 301), Bar Ilan University

When: Sunday 30/1/2011 to Tuesday 1/2/2011

Registration. Participation is free, but registration is required. Please register by 31/12/2010 by sending an email to: mpcschool.biu@gmail.com.

Participation for registered attendees includes lunch and a social event on Monday evening.
For local participants, if you plan on coming with your private car, please include license plate number for free parking.

Hotel: We have arranged a special rate at the Kfar Maccabiah hotel for winter school participants from abroad, or local participants who wish to stay close to Bar-Ilan University. The rate is 480 NIS (approx., $130) a night for a single room and 540 NIS (approx., $150) a night for a double room with two separate beds (i.e., approximately $75 each). The rate includes breakfast. Please send your hotel requirements together with your registration information.

Support: Some stipends of $800 each (for flight and accommodation) are available for overseas students needing support. Please have your advisor send a letter justifying the need for financial support.